The GENES Blog (GEnealogy News and EventS): Top stories concerning ancestral research in Britain, Ireland, and their diasporas, from Irish born Scottish based professional family historian, author and tutor Chris Paton. Feel free to quote from this blog, but please credit The GENES Blog if you do so. To contact me please email chrismpaton @ outlook.com.

Ancestry adds pre-1858 Irish wills database

The source is Phillimore and Thrift’s 5 volume Indexes to Irish Wills, which calendars some 30,000 wills from the times when the Anglican church courts were in charge of probate matters in Ireland. In many cases, the information in the collection is all that survives, with many wills destroyed at the Irish Public Record Office in 1922.

Chris

Time to find your inner Irish...! All the best online Irish genealogy resources can be found through my book Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet - in print and ebook formats. "Very useful, makes me wish I was Irish!" - Saint Patrick, patron saint.